Cricket SA president Chris Nenzani during a media briefing at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on 7 December 2019.
Johan Rynners/Gallo Images)
- Cricket SA’s board is complicit in some of its suspended CEO Thabang Moroe’s questionable decision-making.
- Moroe was suspended after headline sponsor Standard Bank pulled out – on the same day.
- The board refused to resign despite being prompted by another major sponsor, Momentum, to step down.
- The preliminary forensic audit findings into cricket are expected Friday, the scope of which includes whether board decisions were improper.
After all that has happened under its watch, it would be shocking if the Chris Nenzani-led Cricket South Africa (CSA) board comes out of the wreckage unscathed when the preliminary independent audit results are released on Friday.
Having so far ducked, dived and dodged all culpability in the annus horribilis cricket has had since the Cricket World Cup in England, it is high time they took some responsibility for the state of the sport in the country.
For a year, the flagship men’s Proteas team has under-performed locally and abroad. The World Cup was a disaster and, worst of all, top level executives have been suspended (and eventually dismissed in the case of Clive Eksteen), including its CEO, Thabang Moroe.
The Moroe case is a microcosm of the ongoing crisis within cricket and the board burying its head in the sand when the proverbial doodoo hit the fan.
Moroe, a young black CEO who should have been guided better by some highly qualified minds who sit on the board, was allowed to run wild during his time in charge.
Reports emerged last year the board had approved Moroe’s plan for the CEO to have final sign-off on team selection, just three months before South Africa faced England in the World Cup opener at The Oval.
It should have known better after the events of the 2015 tournament, where Vernon Philander was selected ahead of in-form medium pacer Kyle Abbott in the semi-final that the Proteas lost to co-hosts New Zealand.
In February 2019, Nenzani and Co saw it fit to OK a two-year contract extension for then-Proteas coach Ottis Gibson, months before a ball was bowled at the World Cup. They reneged on the premature offer after Gibson’s charges bombed out of the showpiece in spectacular fashion.
The Proteas were then whitewashed in India before losing another home Test series to England last summer.
When things reached their nadir and it was too late to rein Moroe in, much less guide him anymore, the board threw him under the bus and suspended him in December – a suspension that still holds today.
His suspension came largely on the back of Standard Bank ending its sponsorship with the organisation (on the same day, in fact) and the court battle with the South African Cricketers’ Association made it easy for the board to slip him under the proverbial coach.
However, when another of CSA’s major sponsors, Momentum, prompted the board to resign, or at the very least president Nenzani and vice-president Beresford Williams to step down, they flatly refused.
Asked why they refused, Nenzani told the media on Tuesday they did not want to leave cricket in a messy state it was in and it would be beneficial they remained in their positions to stabilise the organisation.
The irony, of course, is the longer they have remained, the more instability followed. The former head of sponsorship, Eksteen who is challenging his dismissal at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), is only going to drag CSA’s name further through the mud – especially if, as he hinted, the case goes as far as the courts.
The Moroe saga continues but the forensic investigation will at least shed some light on whether there are grounds to institute further disciplinary action on the misconduct allegations against him.
The one solace is the board is also being investigated for its part in the decisions that took cricket to where it is today: without a headline Proteas men’s sponsor, losing revenue and trying to save a damaged public image. Should Moroe go down, you would expect Nenzani and Co to go down with him.
